Ganz Schon Clever is the original German-language edition of the game released in English as That’s Pretty Clever. Both editions are identical in gameplay: six colored dice, a score sheet with six interconnected sections, and a combo system that turns picking dice into a chain reaction of scoring opportunities. The game earned a Kennerspiel des Jahres nomination in 2018 and launched an entire trilogy of sequels. The German edition remains widely available and is often preferred by players who encountered the game through its original release or through the popular digital app.
Players across the global community have embraced this game with remarkable consistency. The praise centers on how much strategic depth Warsch extracted from such simple components, and the criticism, limited as it is, points to the same few issues that come with the territory: minimal multiplayer interaction and a fixed score sheet that eventually reveals its optimal paths.
The Combo Engine That Started It All
The heart of Ganz Schon Clever is the way its six scoring sections talk to each other. Filling certain spaces triggers bonuses that let you mark spaces in other sections, which can trigger their own bonuses in turn. A single dice pick can cascade through three or four sections, and mapping those chains in your head before committing to a die is where the real strategy lives. The satisfaction of watching a planned combo fire exactly as intended is disproportionate to the simplicity of the action that triggered it.
Dice selection creates a clean, elegant constraint. On your turn, you roll all six dice and pick one. Any dice showing lower values are placed on a silver platter and removed from your pool. You roll the remaining dice and pick again, three times total. This means taking a high die eliminates fewer options but scores big, while taking a low die preserves the pool but offers less immediate value. Every turn involves reading the current state of your sheet, weighing what you need against what’s available, and accepting the trade-offs.
The passive turn mechanic keeps other players invested. After you finish selecting, opponents choose one die from your leftover pile to use on their own sheets. This means every roll matters to everyone at the table, and you’re constantly evaluating your own needs alongside what the active player might leave behind. It’s a small mechanism that does heavy lifting for engagement.
Solo play is where many players spend the most time. The game provides score thresholds to beat, and the addictive loop of trying to improve on a previous best makes it a natural fit for solo sessions. The digital app broadened the audience considerably, and players report spending dozens of hours chasing high scores on their phones, which speaks to the durability of the core design.
The Fixed Sheet’s Ceiling
Repeated play reveals the score sheet’s limitations. Because the sheet never changes, experienced players begin to identify dominant strategies and optimal opening moves. The discovery phase, where every game teaches you something new about the sheet’s interactions, is the best part of the experience, and it eventually ends. The sequels address this with redesigned sheets, but the base game’s single layout has a visible ceiling.
Multiplayer interaction stays minimal despite the passive dice mechanism. Each player is ultimately solving their own optimization puzzle, and the competitive element comes from comparing final scores rather than any in-game interaction. Some groups embrace this as a feature, treating it as a shared activity rather than a competitive one, but others find the lack of meaningful interaction disappointing.
The dice can produce frustrating sequences. When the colors you need refuse to appear, your carefully planned combo path stalls and you’re forced to take suboptimal picks. Bonus actions and rerolls provide some mitigation, but there are turns where luck simply overrides planning. The short game length means a bad stretch passes quickly, but it still stings.
Component design includes a minor recurring complaint: the scoring tally on the back of the sheet. Flipping back and forth during final scoring is a small hassle that a better layout could have avoided.
Why the Original Still Matters
Ganz Schon Clever matters because it proved that the roll-and-write genre could support real strategic depth. Before its release, most roll-and-writes were pleasant but forgettable fillers. Warsch showed that a simple score sheet and a handful of dice could create an experience complex enough to earn the Kennerspiel nomination, and the resulting explosion of ambitious roll-and-writes owes a debt to this game’s success.
The German edition specifically holds value for collectors and players in German-speaking markets, and the gameplay is language-independent since the score sheet uses only symbols and numbers. For players debating between this and the English edition, the content is identical.
Should You Play Ganz Schon Clever?
This game is for solo gamers, couples, and small groups who enjoy optimization puzzles and don’t need direct player interaction to stay engaged. It works as a gateway game for new players, a filler between heavier titles, and a travel companion that fits in a coat pocket. If you haven’t played any version yet, this or its English counterpart belongs in your collection.
Skip it if you’ve already worn out the English edition, if parallel solitaire isn’t your idea of a multiplayer experience, or if the concept of a roll-and-write simply doesn’t appeal. Players who need every game to feature negotiation, bluffing, or table talk will find nothing for them here.
The Verdict on Ganz Schon Clever
Ganz Schon Clever is the German-language edition of the game that redefined what a roll-and-write could be. The combo-driven scoring system turns simple dice selection into a cascade of strategic decisions, the solo mode is compulsively replayable, and the thirty-minute playtime makes it easy to chain multiple sessions back to back. Multiplayer feels like parallel solitaire at times, and the fixed score sheet limits long-term variety. For the price and the playtime, it packs a remarkable amount of satisfying decision-making into a tiny box.